Down Stairs

Bilingual baby has been trying to gather up the courage to go down the stairs. For a long time she’s only gone up so this is definitely new. Here at my parents house they have a normal set of stairs and a second set which leads you into the family room. There are about 5 steps total which turned out to be a great trial for bilingual baby. She went up and then sat down and started putting her feet on the lower step and sliding her bum to meet her feet. She repeated these steps until she was at the last stair. She was so happy with herself. I was excited for her, too. She’s seen other kids at home practicing going down our staircase but she’s never really tried it. A couple of times she’d sit down in the middle of the staircase and look up at me, ask for my hands and continue with assistance. You can imagine then how fun it was to watch my kid accomplishing a task after she’s been (thinking and) working really hard at it. Yay!

I’ve heard that when a kid is getting ready to accomplish a big task or are moving toward a developmental stage in their life they get really cranky and become harder to understand and to please. That has definitely been the case for our mountaineer. She’ll probably keep working on this skill for a while until she’s mastered it.